In my blog of 16 July, I described some work that we had started in an attempt to explain how small fragments of plastic, mainly blue and green, appeared on the ground in the Sooty Tern colony on Bird Island. Joanna Suares, the island’s conservation officer, continued the weekly monitoring of the fixed quadrats in … More An update on plastics in Bird Island’s Sooty Tern colony
With heavy hearts Christine and I have now left Bird Island after a prolonged seabird-watching experience. It has been an exciting year on an extraordinary island. We arrived in June in time to observe the Sooty Terns’ arrival and egg laying, watched their feeding movements, and saw chicks hatch. After a break we returned in … More Bird Island, Seychelles – a unique experience of living among seabirds
Between 27 and 30 August we deployed satellite tags on 15 juvenile Sooty Terns in order to follow their movements after fledging and discover where their parents took them as the fledglings learned to feed themselves. When attached the tags to birds that weighed a minimum of 180 grams, judging that chicks of this weight … More SeyCCAT project: our tagged juvenile Sooty Terns head for the open ocean
In 1994 I arrived on Bird Island ring Sooty Terns and to search for birds that I had ringed in 1993 as part of a long-term programme of ringing aimed at investigating the survival of adults and juveniles. This was to provide information that would help to estimate the number of eggs that could be … More Two remarkable coincidences in Japanese/Anglo/Seychelles relationships
Since 2011 we have been using different kinds of electronic tracking device to investigate the movements and behaviour of Bird Island’s Sooty Terns, greatly increasing our knowledge of the birds’ use of the surrounding ocean. Prior to that much of our knowledge of Sooty Tern survival, longevity, movements between islands and daily activities in the … More Ringing and recapture of Bird Island’s Sooty Terns remains important in unraveling their lives
Angelique Pouponneau, CEO of SeyCCAT, and Vania Robert, its Executive Assistant, visited Bird Island for two days, 26 to 28 August, to see for themselves the progress Rachel, Christine and I are making on the SeyCCAT-funded project involving the satellite tracking of juvenile Sooty Terns. We were able to show them the procedures we followed … More SeyCCAT project: oversight visit
Since our arrival on Bird Island on 20 August, and Rachel Bristol’s arrival the following day, our main activity has been to prepare the 15 satellite tags (five made by Microwave Telemetry Inc. (MTI) http://www.microwavetelemetry.com and ten manufactured by Lotek in UK http://www.lotek.com) that have been bought for the SeyCCAT-funded project. This is aimed at … More SeyCCAT project: update on satellite tracking of juvenile Sooty Terns from Bird Island
August is the month when the strength of the south-east trade winds reaches its maximum in Seychelles, leading to rough seas and large swells. The trade wind season has always been regarded as the dry season. However, changes do seem to be afoot and recent years have seen more rainfall, sometimes heavy. The big swells … More August on Bird Island
We returned to Bird Island on 20 August to find the Sooty Tern colony transformed. Instead of a sea of black and white adults, neatly spaced and all pointing in the same direction as they incubated their eggs facing into the wind, the colony is now dominated by juveniles awaiting their next feed from their … More Sooty Terns: the 2019 generation
After beginnings in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, bird ringing (“bird banding” in the Americas and Australia) has become a major tool in the study of the lives of birds worldwide, enabling investigators to discover if birds remain in one place or, if not, where they travel, what routes they take and when … More Ringing in new discoveries
